Solid description ✌️

amazing, my first ludum dare gamejam!! what a great experience :-) :-)

Really unique interpretation of the theme which was executed beautifully, props for being able to put a writer to a good use during a game jam.

Really nice and quite imaginative!

Great visuals and audio. Interesting game i like it. Good job!

Very impressed with what you've pulled off with this!!

Really cool way of following the theme! The atmosphere is quite unique and the art is beautiful! I had some troubles with the controls, I'm not really sure if I used the F key at all. It's already amazing to have a voice over for a jam game but subtitles could be really helpful. Well done :)

Game is very hard, but it doesn't get you bored or frustrated - that's how I like it. It's amazing how you managed to put game like this together. Everything is super pro. Art, writing, voice acting, mechanic. Very very wholesome!!!

boy, that was amazing. i am really surprised this is a game jam, and i am also kinda sad that this game doesn't get more love. 10/10 would recommend!!

This was great, the art is fantastic and the music adds to the tense atmosphere - some solid writing and voice acting as well. The game is hard but not frustrating, really impressive effort in such a small timeframe.

The art is truly amazing i really love the style! the audio and voice acting is of high standards! I felt like the game was a bit slow and repetitive for my taste, but still this if phenomenal!

Truly fantastic game! It was such a unique concept, and you pulled it off very well. The audio was especially impressive. Personally, I found it to be a bit difficult, so maybe it would have been helpful to have checkpoints or the ability to change your difficulty level. But all in all, it was incredible. Congrats on completing the jam and thank you for sharing!

This game has had one of the best styles of the games I have played this jam. Great job for your first game jam I hope to see more of your work in the game jams to come.

Bravo! Really cool atmosphere and art. Voice acting was a nice touch. My only issue lies with how repetitive and impossible the game becomes. The NPCs that can spot you move in a spastic fashion which makes it a bit annoying. Other than that really great!

This is a good game. My personal tastes don't like 8-bit graphics, but I liked the music, the voice overs, and the overall story of the game.

This is incredibly polished for a jam game, particularly the music and voice acting. Great take on the theme, and the acting and dialogue really make it come alive.

Pretty cool game and looks very pretty too :-3

lovely graphics, audio and concept
gameplay wasn't super fun tho tbh

Awesome production quality. Really neat to have a game with voice acting and other polish during a jam. I found it a bit hard personally, but overall well done. :)

Really cool idea! Feels like it just needed a little more time, or little more intuitive indicators (such as a person's cone of vision, of how long before they wake up). When my friend & I finally got a body to the house to perform surgery on, it was unclear how we actually gave the body parts over, or if we needed to at all, and it seemed like no body part would take, and we also couldn't make space on Henry. It didn't appear like there was a timer for how long we had before Henry would die, so there no real sense of urgency.

Overall it felt like it was really polished, and just a couple steps away from being that perfect game for the competition. My advice would be to focus more on the gameplay itself next time, and ensure the core game is fully fleshed out before all the polish really goes in. This entry felt like it nailed 4.0 and higher in everything other than being an overall fun game, which seems to be a trap larger teams can fall into. It takes a lot of work to organize & plan everything out from the start so that all members have work to do, especially with such an ambitious project as this was (visually & mood wise), so pivoting to improve gameplay becomes a larger challenge. Best of luck!

I really loved this game. It was super well made and polished. Especially the UI, voice over, graphics and music. It was a bit hard and with all the people around. That's why I sadly couldn't finish henry. But I am really amazed how good this game is. Please keep making games. And if you decide to continue on this one I would love to see how it will turn out. Great game :)

Very unique idea and solid atmosphere. The gameplay is a bit tedious, but the other elements make up for it. A good entry!

I love the theme and dialogue. Audio is nicely done, and I know how hard it is to get all the audio recorded and polished in such a short time. :) Well done!

Done very well.

"Nothing to see here, just a nice Victorian lady standing casually next to a corpse. Move along, move along."

I loved this so much. Turns out I had a victorian-frenkenstein-esque-corpse-stealing-game sized void in my life, and this filled that void. The design, the way the voice acting added so much story and atmosphere to the whole experience, and then the whole morbid, grisly corpse cutting concept of the game itself. It warms the cockles of my shrivelled black heart.

If I had any critiques, it's that: a) I would like more, much more, b) as things presently stand there isn't much incentive to go to the upper levels (it looked like there were at least three?) so you guys definitely need to work on the gameplay balance there. Also worth noting that your voice cues for the chest/hand surgery are currently swapped, and sometimes people have multiple body part layers (in the html version at least). But overall everything ran pretty smoothly. Such an impressive entry considering the time limits. Admittedly I'm a sucker for stuff like this, but it might be my favourite thus far. :black_heart:

Great concept and graphics. I loved the theme and the consistency within it. Great sounds and voice over, just wow!

This game looks really cool, but I'm stuck in the surgery screen; how do I leave it? (I'll leave a full review once I have played more than one corpse's worth)

What a great Pixelartstyle! The music fits perfectly.

I love the pixel art! I found the game really hard and too long, it took me 10 minutes to get the first body to my house and its so frustating when they wake up and see you. I also noticed that the people lurking around tends to always be on me (on the bottom level, the 3 on me, all the time), making it super hard to move the body, i had to wait that 2 were asleep, the other looking away but he could turn around any moments and i wouldnt have the time to hide. Also : the audio is really amazing! Overall it's a really interesting game, a bit too hard and long to move the bodies.

@nolanfa You have to cut up the body, transplant the body parts to the body on the left and then a Finish Surgery button will appear ^_^

Such a solid game! I loved the voiceover, whoever did it is really talented, and if I might request an addition for the future it would be subtitles for those who can't enjoy these amazing voices. The pixelart on this game in incredible, the animations feel just right. The surgery is super fun and works really well, I only wish there was a way to replay the hint you get (maybe for a penalty). I honestly don't know what more to say about this game. It is truly an amazing jam entry!

Oh, right, I was transfering the husband's body parts to the John Doe's, instead of the opposite. That's because I hadn't paid too much attention to the drawings in the instructions, but I think it might have been avoided if the body positions between the instructions and the surgery table weren't swapped (but then I seem to be the only one to have had that problem, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

The game is great!
- the story is really cool. I really like how in the introduction the husband says "I'll live forever in your memories" and in the gameplay the wife is like "okay, then I'll just Frankenstein you" (which... seemed contradictory with some of the dialog later on? Which I just chose to disregard. It's much funnier that way (english is not my first language though so I may have misunderstood something)). And the aesthetic of "don't worry about me, I'm just chilling next to this dead body" is really funny (also when you're just outside of the field of vision of someone, painstakingly dragging the body while walking three meters before them, and they keep walking like nothing's wrong).
- the voice acting adds a lot, and it's done really well. Maybe think about adding subtitles for ESL people? I mean, the diction is very clear, but I think a few years back I might have needed it.
- the art is great. The shapes of the passers-by and the dead bodies are very clear and instantly readable as exactly what they are, I love the main character's sprite (probably because a lady in a big frilly dress cutting up bodies and dragging bodies is much funnier than a guy or a less lady-like lady doing the same), and the background is perfect with clear clues as to the gameplay. Also the Zzzz are very clear about what's happening and what you should do.
- and the gameplay is interesting, with, I think, a good length (though I cheated and came back several times to the same body, the closer one, for different body parts (btw for consistency's sake I would prefer that a used dead body disappear, if it doesn't make the game too hard))

I don't even know where to begin with... It's impressive how you managed to make this game in such a short amount of time!

It is pretty, the artistic direction is great, this game is packed with an awesome ambiance.
I love the game mechanics and the voice acting is a really good addition.

I loved it!

Awesome Game! :heart:

Amazing job, you absolutely killed it with the graphics, audio, and mood!

What a lovely one, in all regards. Excellent graphics and like previously said rather impressive overall. Don't know what else to say, it was a joy all-around. Hea töö! :)

Really cool game! great graphics and audio

Really cool game with an amazing setting and mood. The only thing which really bothered me was the lack of an conclusion, I might have missed it but just "Fin" felt a bit lackluster. But considering the time I understand that might be asking for a bit much.
Good game!

Wow, that's definitely a high-quality entry! Graphics and atmosphere are awesome, and you even added some very cool voice acting!
I have a few feedbacks on the gameplay (keep in mind it's minor things for a jam game, only rooms for improvement):
- It seems there is only 1 way to access the mansion, which is coming from the right side. It would have been nice to have 2 paths, one from each side, so we can choose which path we take depending on where we are when we take a corpse.
- The "enemies" movements are too unpredictable, which makes it very hard to guess when is the right time to move. Some simpler an clearer paths would help to plan our moves ahead.
- It feels weird that when enemies spot you they don't move faster than you, even if they are running while you're dragging a corpse. It's not very consistent here.
- I'm not an artist, but the arms are balancing weirdly in the moving animation. It seems they are moving twice as fast as the legs (1 entire back-and-forth for the arms while 1 half-cycle for the legs), it should be a 1:1 ratio with each arm following the opposite leg.
- Giving informations only with the voices isn't a good thing imo. If you miss what the girl says, there is no other way (or "easy" way) to play it back, so it's a bit frustrating. It also prevents all disabled people with hearing loss to play your game, which isn't cool for them *and* for you. Adding some subtitles would be a cheap and great way to improve on that part :)

Other than that, it's an excellent entry. Congratulations!

Wow, amazing voice acting, not something I think I have said before in a game jam! Good application of the theme.

I struggled quite a bit with the controls and I think if the enemies were more predictable it would be better to plan.

Wow, this was amazing, what @nsadie said, the voice acting, the suberb art style, visually and thematically, top marks!

The concept is great too, finding the cadavers, taking the parts needed, the mechanics could do with tweaking, there's the stealth element which is cool, but it's a bit haphazard, and the timer to do actions was a bit frustating. Things like the stairs/ entering the 'Surgery' and picking up / dropping corpses could be 'instant' rather than having a timer. Keep working on this, an excellent idea and wonderful art/design.

Ah yes, keeping the past alive. A theme that will always resonate with me.

I'm a bit envious of the citizens' uncanny ability to fall asleep while standing up, even immediately after giving chase to a criminal ;)

You're winning the mood category. The art direction, voice acting, sound, probably overall best I've seen this event.

I like games where the main character is insane (I have to finish Senua).

Like other commenters said, map design is a bit lacking (3 same-ish platforms, one way to access the home). Walk animation is a little whack, but I'm terrible at it myself. It's an OK stealth game, but I believe this core loop would work better in 3D.

There's a funny little bug: if a bystander wakes up right next to you, the "hey you" "oh god" lines will be played and restarted several times a second.

I liked it! Only problem I had was it didn't seem there were good opportunities to get passed guards, I'd keep waiting and waiting and they'd go back and forth in the same spots. Really cool concept though! :)

What can I say that hasn't been said? Great mood, lighting, graphics, music, and voice acting. The polish is superb, especially that beautiful starting screen! But yes, where it falls short a bit is the gameplay. It is repetetive and the clues for which parts to take aren't that clear. I would really like more mechanics - for example if I could stealth kill people and use their corpse, instead of just having corpses lying around (Victorian times was different I guess?). And maybe having a high kill rate would lead to coppers coming out on lookout for a real challenge. It could really be an 8-bit Frankenstein Hitman crossover, if we just had a bit more focus on the gameplay.

the voicing is so good.. along with the music. Got stuck a bit in the home scene, couldn't find a way back to street. Otherwise i had fun~

The overall style and atmosphere of the game is outstanding; really conjures up what I'd imagine Victorian London was like. The concept itself is really interesting, but I'll have to echo what other people have said about the stealth mechanics. The random behaviour of the civilians make it difficult to judge how much you can move (I failed by dragging the corpse past a sleeping civ and he must have woken up) and the lack of "awareness" indicators (e.g. a view cone) make it a case of hold E to pickup corpse, move a few steps, press F to drop, wait to see if civ gets closer, hold E to pickup, etc.
It's also been mentioned before, but the instructions suggest that the husband is on the right, so in my first attempt at playing I ended up completely dismembering the corpse on the right while trying to drag the left's hair onto it. I thought it was a bug and gave up until I read a comment on here that they were swapped.

Love the blue tone and the atmosphere.Great entry!

Too dark for my taste, but well polished.
And the only issue I've had is that the people passing by are doing it randomly...

otherwise, nice game.
Keep up the good work.

I confess that the heart raced when I carried the body. It was a little scared.
I really enjoyed the art and the atmosphere that the music provided.
At first it was a little difficult to understand. There is a lot to do. Over time I learned. Good game despite the story being bizarre.

Congratulations!

It's rare to see a fully voiced Jam entry. And the voice acting is really good at that. Mood is really spot on and reminds me of Allan Mores 'From Hell'.

What a dark game! :smiley:

Art style, sounds, gameplay and voice over were great!

Just a tiny bug that I have found: When a "guard" wakes up when you stand right next to them, the game seems to crash (stuck in infinite loop of "hey, drop that!")

This took a twist in the direction I was not expecting it which made me smile in the "Huh, you got me" especially since the game agreed we should be focusing more on keeping his memory alive rather than himself. lol I like the art style, the voice acting, and the audio all work together to set the right mood. I didn't quite understand the mini game to swap parts around as I never saw the new parts go in or at least didn't get the right feedback to let me know I had done well or not. I think maybe focusing on that a bit more to complete the experience.

Really good game, it was a little confusing to understand at first what to do, despite all the instructions, but I think that is just me. One small bug I found was that, if you get catch when you are inside a building, when the game restarts, it restarts zoomed in, but I just refreshed the page and everything went back to normal.
Overall very well produced game, congrats.

Interesting idea, but a bit confusing. I started in the web build, but couldn't figure it out since the UI at the top is cut off. So, then I downloaded the game. I thought that you had to knock out the guys walking around, but instead you can only drag the blue guys. Avoiding the patrolling enemies is quite hard, since their behaviour is unpredictable. This makes it very frustrating if you loose, after finally making some progress. Perhaps the penalty for detection can be something else.

Now, I did somewhat understand how to do the surgery; cut off pieces from both guys and then swap them. However, I didn't know which parts needed to be swapped. All of the parts on Henry looked just fine, so maybe the parts that need to be replaced can look rotten. Also, the decay bar wasn't clear to me. Does this relate to Henry or the body I'm dragging? Should it fill up or go down?

Wow, amazing graphics, mood and storyline. I really love this, even though I found it quite hard (noob at gaming) and didn't get very far - but I see what you're doing and it's awesome!! Well done.

well done! i love the color palette it really enhances the mood. Also the amount of art is impressive, going indoors for the buildings was really cool and the transparency to see out side, was unexpected and awesome! The story is funny and engaging, and is elevated via the voice acting.
I will say that the direction in the beginning where a bit off from what I expected for the game play, I didn't intuitively understand that their would be a wait time associated with interaction (ie. picking up bodies, going in doors or up staircases ect.) Also the decay miter in green also through me off, a full green bar typically means good not you're about to loose this asset (so maybe flipping the green and red bars might be nice?) Overall though top-notch!

The mood you created is fantastic. The palette and art are beautiful. Music simple and repetitive, yet never annoying. The voice acting adds so much too, and I enjoyed the concept of clues delivered that way. When it came to the gameplay, it was a bit lacking to me : draging the bodies all the way, same path everytime. Shortcuts and dropping bodies from windows would have been quite nice. Loved it nonetheless, wonderful job you did. Congrats on this piece of art, hope you'll make an enhanced version at some point!

Really amazing mood, I'm blown away! The graphics, the VA, the theme interpretation, wow

This game's story is awesome. The concept sort of reminds me of some of the games in the Hitman franchise having to dodge suspecting people and such. I think that it was a good problem solving game with the audio cues. One thing to be careful with audio cues being integral to gameplay is that it is extremely hard for players who are hard of hearing or deaf to progress in the game. The game definitely felt immersive as though you were the character especially with the great voice acting and creepily intimate surgery parts. Love it!

Awesome! Its a really innovative and challenging game. The graphics and sound effects / music are great, and I like the slight reference to the story as you play - Constance talking about past events with her husband as she replaces each body part. The voice acting was a great part of the game too! I got so close to completing him before getting caught in between two people who'd noticed me.

I have no idea why they are chasing me for dragging bodies all ready strewn across the town, but I still love the concept! xD

Cool game :) maybe the balancing is a bit off, and some subtitles would have help if you don't quite catch the instructions, but good game overall! Haven't see this theme elsewhere in the jam so far, congrats.

Wow, this was a pretty incredible game! I really enjoyed the visual style, it was really stunning throughout. The audio was also awesome! Great music, and the voiceovers were a really well done touch that add a lot to the feel of the theme. The mood you guys created was really awesome, and had such a distinct style and personality that makes it really special! The gameplay was very tense and fun, though at times I found it extremely difficult to get the bodies back to the house. So, I didn't have as many opportunities as I would've liked to try out the body cutting mechanic. Overall though, it was a really cool project, probably the most polished game I've seen this jam. Awesome job, and I hope to see this game get some more love in the future!

The overall asthetics here are really well done. Graphics and sound really sell the mood and theme really well. Unfortunatley I wasn't actually able to play very fare. There were just too many prowlers and not enough ways to deal with them. Specially when 3 or 4 of them decide to spawn right outside the home building. I spent soooo much time just waiting around for them to decide to wander off. Often the bodies would go off before I could get any into the house.

After playing the game I watched some of the videos on the itch page, where I found out that you could hide from persuers in the bushes and such. This would have been good to know when I was playing. While I knew you could hide in there I'd assumed that once a prowler was alerted they would catch me if I tried to hide in a bush. Also, it wouldn't have helped with the issue I mentioned above.

Also, the one body I managed to get back to the home I wasn't sure what to do with because I couldn't quite make out what the voice over was saying.

Overall, I think if you fine tuned where the prowlers spawn and maybe gave the player a way to get them to disperse if there are a bunch of them blocking your path you'd really have somethign here... and what was the point of having those buildings you can go into?